


After the Tribulations: Just Another Monday Morning

by ljs



Series: Tribulations [2]
Category: Sleepy Hollow (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Established Relationship, F/M, Fluff, Future Fic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-05-26
Updated: 2016-05-26
Packaged: 2018-06-10 18:39:57
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,704
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6969610
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ljs/pseuds/ljs
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Assume that the story diverged from canon in late Season 3. Assume that the Witnesses beat all seven years of Tribulations, and have made Sleepy Hollow home.</p><p>Assume that they have their own routines for a Monday. Assume that routine looks a little different for them.</p>
            </blockquote>





	After the Tribulations: Just Another Monday Morning

At 5:50 am, the alarm goes off. 

Crane mumbles a “Morning again so soon?” and then slams it off and buries his face in his pillow.

Abbie, stretching, smiles to herself before she rolls to her side. “Good morning, Crane,” she sing-songs. “Rise and shine.”

“You are unbearable this early in the day,” comes his muffled reply, which complaint he makes on average of three times a week. As is traditional, he follows it with “Luckily I love you enough to tolerate your revolting pre-dawn cheer.”

“Love you too, Crane,” she says, and walks her fingers up his bare spine. He shivers a little under her touch, then turns his head to smile sleepily at her. “Crane,” she says again, and leans over, pushes his tangled long hair out of the way, and kisses his ear. Breathing softly on that spot, she whispers, “My man, I said _rise_ and shine.”

His grin is a little lopsided. “I heard you the first time, Sheriff. Your instruction was unnecessary.” Without warning he flips over, grabs her around the waist, and drops her on top of him. As she straddles him, she rolls her hips, and yes, he’s hard and ready for her.

Weekday mornings (unlike weekend mornings) aren’t conducive to a lot of foreplay, so he goes straight to the moves that make her crazy – hot hard kisses on each breast, hands up and in and around – until she rises on her knees, takes him in, and rides him until they’re both splayed out and thoroughly satisfied.

After he catches his breath, he says smugly, “Now isn’t that better than your addiction to yoga?” – for which piece of arrogance she steals his pillow and starts to beat him about the head and shoulders. Laughing, he curls in on his long-limbed self like a hedgehog –

Until they’re interrupted by four taps on their bedroom door and their daughter Grace’s shrilled “Morning morning, Mummy and Daddy! Can I come in?”

“She gets this horrific morning cheer from you,” he groans.

Abbie’s already on her feet, reaching for her robe, but at that she turns and grins. “She’s my girl,” she says, and throws him his sweats from the chair where he’d neatly laid them, hitting him in the face as she intends, and then calls, “Just a minute, Grace honey!”

A muffled eighteenth-century oath comes as he wrestles the sweatpants off his head. She grins wider.

Truly, this is the best part of waking up. Even on a Monday.  
……………………………

At 7:35 Abbie’s sitting at the kitchen island, sipping the coffee he’s made her and reading on her phone her schedule for the day. She’s already done 30 minutes of Pilates, taken her shower and gotten dressed, approved Grace’s choice of clothes for school, heard Grace’s spelling words (which of course were perfect, given her inheritance of her father’s memory), and grabbed some peanut butter toast – all of which was more fun than a city commissioner private interview and two citizens’ groups she has booked for this afternoon.

“Mummy, Daddy made us bento boxes for our lunches!” Gracie says from the depths of the (open) refrigerator.

“Yes, Gracie, I did. And you have extra grapes, as you requested last week,” Crane says from his usual breakfast post, leaning against the counter and cradling his own cup of coffee. “Now close the refrigerator door, please, else I lecture you again about wasteful consumption and climate change.”

“Oh, Daddy, you’re so silly,” Gracie says indulgently, but closes the door anyway.

Abbie looks up at him and smiles. “When did you have time to make our lunch, babe? Or was that why you were late to bed last night?”

He murmurs agreement, then adds, “Bento boxes and Chapter 10.”

“Oh, the book’s going again?” she says. “You got out of your hole?”

“Yes, I killed a minor character and the plot has begun to flow once more,” he says absently, coming around to look at her phone.

“You’re so ruthless,” she says, laughing, but then she remembers how ruthless he really can be – from taking the Horseman’s head the first time, all those centuries ago, to the way he sliced through the final demon five years ago as the world all but went up in flames. A little fictional killing’s nothing to her Crane –

Who’s warm against her back, the edges of his long jacket falling around her like a shawl. “Oh, Sheriff, you’re to be more politician than law-enforcement officer today,” he murmurs into her ear. “What a waste.”

Her smile becomes grimace. Yes, that’s the part of her job she hates. “Well, if you run across something nasty during your day, you give me a call,” she says, “it’d be a nice break.”

“Me? Run into trouble?” he says, deeper, his mouth against her ear.

“You _are_ trouble, babe,” she says, and turns her head to smile against his cheek.

“Daddy,” Gracie says from the other side of the island, in a tone that conveys her weariness at such a boring parental display of affection, “you have a text. From Uncle Joe.”

“What have I told you about reading other people’s stuff, baby girl?” Abbie says, even as Crane reaches over and takes the phone so that he can scan the text himself.

“I didn’t _read it_ read it, Mummy, I promise,” Gracie says, and then takes a grape out of her lunch and pops it in her mouth – as if chewing would end the argument. In this too she is her father’s daughter.

Crane sighs. “As you know, Madame Jenny is on that buying trip to Philadelphia. Poor Master Corbin has to go in early for a staff meeting at the hospital, and needs us to give Gus a ride to kindergarten. So, Miss Grace, that means we need to be off at once.”

“Avaunt!” Gracie shouts, grabs her bookbag and her lunch, and gallops off.

“Avaunt?” Abbie says meaningfully. “You teaching her the language of your people, babe?”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Crane says smoothly, steals a kiss, and heads off, whistling.

Once the outside door closes, the house settles quiet and sunshiny all around Abbie. She takes a moment, just one, to appreciate what she never quite thought she’d have in the midst of the madness.

Then, sighing just a little, she looks at her schedule again. At least she can start the day with a good meeting.  
……………………………….

It’s 8:00 am, and the office outside the glass walls of Abbie’s private sanctum is humming. Inside, however, everything’s fine. “So nothing out of the ordinary this week. Good,” Abbie says as she scans the report.

Sophie Foster-Reynolds, her second-in-command and head of the Odd Crimes Department (Crane’s suggestion for its title), shrugs. “You and Crane put down that last uprising of undead Hessians last month,” she says. “It’s been clear since then.”

“You’d think that once the damn Tribulations were over, we wouldn’t have to deal with this nonsense. It’s like we got an unlimited supply of those zombie soldiers. More than there ever were during the Revolutionary War itself,” Abbie says, and sips her work decaf, and makes an involuntary face. It’s just not as good as her husband’s. She’s spoiled that way. 

“Ley lines and all, though. Sleepy Hollow’s like a—“

“Do _not_ say Hellmouth,” Abbie says, laughing. “You and Jenny need to not perpetrate that bull.”

“Only speak the truth,” Sophie says, laughing back.

But Abbie’s attention is caught by one small line in the report. “Wait. I didn’t hear before about this guy – Richard Marquette – opposite the elementary school.”

“Ah. The crackpot guy, to put it in unofficial terms,” Sophie says. “I interviewed him, and he’s not capable of giving any kind of coherent information at all. Half-blind, and not entirely with it. Dementia, his daughter told me.”

“He says he saw a red coat on the grounds of the school, Sophie,” Abbie says. “Saw it two days ago.”

“And?”

“And the revenants we took down had red coats,” Abbie says slowly. “What if we missed one?”

Her private phone vibrates. Text message. She already knows it’s Crane.

She and Sophie are already on their feet, heading out the door.  
………………………………

It’s 8:15, and when Abbie pulls up at the front entrance to Tarrytown Elementary, the first thing she sees is her husband, rummaging around the back of the family SUV. There’s an uncanny stillness around – no one on the grounds, doors and windows shut, no sound from inside the school.

But she sees out of the corner of her eye the flutter of red, there in the greenspace behind the playground. She hears that odd huffing sound that undead lungs make.

“You get the kids and teachers all squared away, babe?” she says as she gets out of her sheriff’s vehicle.

“Indeed. I told them I saw a bear,” Crane says, and turns around, holding his loaded crossbow.

“Seems like you have it under control,” Sophie observes. “What do you need us for?”

“In case I miss,” he says, and tosses his hair out of his eyes with one impatient turn of his head. "Also, the Sheriff expressed a wish to get out of the office."

Abbie is suffused with love of him – which she’ll share in private later. For now, she takes out her revolver.

“Oh great, Dead-eye’s ready with her all-purpose solution,” Sophie says, long-suffering.

“You hold the fort, Foster,” Abbie says. “Crane and I got this.”

The two of them, armed, walk toward the greenspace. That awful huffing sound is louder, and she can hear the revenant’s footsteps dragging on new fallen leaves. The season’s on the turn, and it wouldn’t have been able to hide much longer.

But Abbie, even as she feels a familiar stab of sadness at so much goddamn evil and loss in the world, lets herself enjoy her Crane’s presence at her side. This too is familiar. This is her and her love, taking on evil and loss and getting shit done.

“Ready, Sheriff?” Crane says, and lifts his crossbow.

“Ready, Crane,” she says, and lifts her gun.

Just another Monday morning for the Witnesses. There’s something comforting in her certainty that this is how it always will be.


End file.
